I've never been that far south. Tampa is about as far as I've been. :)
Some communities around here give the golf carts the right of way. They ignore stop signs, and drive down the middle of the roads. If they pull out in front of a car, the car's driver is at fault. They even got the state to build a private golf cart bridge over US-441 near Leesburg.
There were five mounting locations for 30 gallon tanks on my old stepvan service truck. Fully loaded, it got over 20 MPG or 600+ miles per tank. Dual tanks easily let you drive over a thousand miles. All five would take you over 3000 miles, if you could afford to fill all of them. ;-)
Ever try to back a trailer with a bent tongue? It was about a 5° twist to the right. It pulled OK, but wouldn't back worth a damn. I would have to weave it back & forth to get it where I neeed it. I had some wise ass yelling at me that I didn't know how to handle a trailer so I got out & told him to show me. He jackknifed it in less than 15 feet. After the tongue was replaced, it was fine.
Hell no he isn't. Building a car is far more complicated than you seem able to comprehend. Gunner is barely capable of fixing a car starter... even with lots of help. Your idea that he, or "most" of RCM could build a car is ridiculous and indefensible. It's far more likely to be true that the majority, having spent so much time typing out political horseshit, would need to hire out the most basic vehicle maintenance, and probably defer some regular bathing.
I've built some serious things and I can tell you a fact: people who come along during the process to ask what's taking so long never have a clue about what's involved, and seldom accept the logical explanation no matter how clear and obvious it is.
Then there's a huge money making opportunity for you. Get together with all the self proclaimed experts of RCM and build whatever you think is superior. You only need a single prototype and it needn't be complete but merely proof of concept. If it's superior then investment will flow like water. If all you do is keep talking then sensible readers will know exactly how confident you really are in your opinions. But before you waste any time, let me clue you in. I am one of the many people whose money you'd need to attract. And I wouldn't invest a dime based on anything I've read in RCM about vehicle design, or based on any of the talent claimed by RCM posters.
If you want to do something that's possible and stands a chance of making something less than minimum wage, then here's my serious suggestion: write up a proposal for RCM members to build a car cooperatively based on members' claimed talents. Email the plan to members, and post the excuses on a website. That's something I might pay a buck to read.
No. You drive the car fifty miles and then the petrol engine cuts in. Next time you are at an outlet, you recharge the battery. On short journeys the petrol engine isn't needed at all
My electric car take me everywhere I need to go. 80 miles range max.
If I do go outside the range, I have to stay long enough to recharge it. Depending on the charge point that could be eight hours or 20 minutes. This is very infrequent for me.
When the sun shines, I can use free solar power from my PV array. Otherwise it's from the grid.
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The I-miev is electric, the Volt/Ampera is a series hybrid. Petrol here is about $10/gallon BTW
The real trick is the electronics in modern electric cars. The motor in mine BTW is water cooled (as are the electronics), it has a radiator up front.. The battery is air conditioned whilst on fast charge.
I bought my utility trailer and my logsplitter real cheap partly because both had flipped. I paid a pro weldor $20 to cut and reweld the trailer tongue, and put a new coupler on the splitter myself.
Yes, without electronics modern vehicles, both conventional and EV, wouldn't be practically possible. EA thinks RCM could come up with a simpler solution for EVs but I haven't seen any plausible suggestions nor any evidence that eliminating computers entirely could make the vehicles any cheaper.
Three coolant reservoirs on my Volt. Cooling AND heating of the batteries.
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